On Trump’s removal from the Colorado ballot, and our divergent, polarized realities
We seldom acknowledge how easy it is for us humans to disagree
In our angry political debates, and in the judgmental rhetoric of political leaders and pundits and activists, there is usually a focus on “who is right” and “who is wrong.” People often speak as if they know what’s right and what’s wrong.
Taylor Dotson examines this tendency in his book The Divide: How Fanatical Certitude Is Destroying Democracy. He writes that “what drives political polarization is not our disregard for facts in a post-truth era, but rather our obsession with truth.” We tend to behave as if the truth is obvious, that it is clear—and we tend to behave as if others are idiots, or worse, for not seeing the clear truth that we present to them. And this way of engaging with others ramps up animosity and contempt on both sides.
We seem to hardly ever back up a bit and look at an obvious truth—potentially the most important truth: it is very easy for us humans to disagree. This is true even for fairly simple situations, and it becomes even more true the more complex a situation becomes. Many of the issues we fight about are issues where we don’t even agree on defining the problem—let alone finding a solution.
And this basic fact becomes even more true the more polarized we become. The increasingly divergent Republican and Democrat narratives are constructed by a selective filtering of a huge number of anecdotes and data points, and also biased, distorted perceptions of various sorts. And those strongly embedded narratives then affect how people interpret new events. Our biased interpretations of current events are grafted onto our ever-growing narratives of the badness of the “other side.”
If we can learn to embrace this very simple truth—that it’s easy for us to disagree—we’re in a better situation to engage in more respectful and productive ways—even as we think the “other side” has to some extent lost their mind and is dangerous.
We’ll be in a better position to avoid worst-case lose-lose scenarios.
Trump’s removal from the Colorado ballot
In the case of Trump being removed from the Colorado ballot, there are an abundance of perspectives one can reach about this—just as is true for many of the issues we argue about. To help you see some these perspectives, I’d recommend checking out Tangle’s summary of the perspectives on this. (And in general, I’d recommend everyone subscribe to and promote Tangle; I think the more Americans read Tangle, the less polarized we’ll be.)
The fact that there can be so much debate, even amongst politically similar people, helps us understand the complexity of this situation. It helps us understand how easy it can be to wind up at very different stances.
Besides the points mentioned in Tangle’s piece, people who want to understand pro-Trump perspectives must also understand how this latest event slots into their views that powerful liberal institutions and people have been unfairly maligning and working against Trump since before he was elected. For example, there was a lot of bad and biased Trump-Russia news coverage that’s been criticized by many people, even by some liberal-leaning and anti-Trump people. And there is a lot of academic work that has been used to build a narrative that racism is a significant explanation for Trump support, even as that a lot of that work has been criticized by other researchers as biased (and I examine that in my book). Trump voters also perceive a lot of very pessimistic and biased interpretations of things Trump has said and done.
(To be clear, this is not a defense of Trump; if you follow my work, you know that I often speak about the dangers Trump presents. I am just trying to explain how pro-Trump people build their narratives.)
People looking to understand pro-Trump perspectives must also try to understand how this slots into narratives that liberals too often try to get their way via legal means (aka, “lawfare”). This tendency is something even fellow progressives have criticized; for example, Mark Lilla, in his book The Once and Future Liberal, criticized the left for too often focusing on court wins and protesting, and not enough on the harder but much more important work of persuading others and building coalitions. (Again, to be clear: I’m not saying this is the case with the Colorado ruling; I’m just examining how the Colorado ruling slots in with such narratives.)
Democrats and never-Trumpers who want to pull America back from the brink of chaos must be willing to examine the more rational objections from the pro-Trump side, and attempt to see what drives their grievances.
And, similarly, pro-Trump people who want us to avoid worst-case us-vs-them scenarios must be willing to see what drives highly pessimistic and fearful views of Trump. For example, the simple fact that he refused to concede an election despite even many of his fellow Republicans and allies saying his actions were wrong and dangerous. Or his, months before the 2020 election, making it obvious to anyone paying attention that he would refuse to concede the election if he lost, no matter what happened. Or his seeming to egg on his followers on January 6th to “fight,” his inaction during the event, and his various scary statements like saying that maybe Pence deserved to be hung or suggesting that General Milley perhaps deserved to be executed. They must be willing to see why so many judges and others have agreed that Trump was involved in an insurrection. (To name just a few areas of concern; I could of course name a lot more things that contribute to fears of Trump, and I talk about that in Defusing American Anger.)
For this Colorado ruling, Pro-Trump people should try to understand why so many people, including many Republicans, think it was correct (even as they may disagree).
To Republicans and Democrats, I’d say: We can see each others’ views on all these things without agreeing with them. This is easily possible. I don’t think any of the narratives on the right or the left are that hard to wrap one’s head around. The fear that considering the other side’s perspectives “helps them” and “hurts us” is I’d argue exactly what drives us further into contemptuous polarization. I’d argue that trying to engage in good faith with perspectives on the “other side,” as much as one is able to, helps prevent our two realities from becoming more and more divergent; doing that is what may prevent worst-case lose-lose scenarios.
We need more people, Democrats and Republicans, to see that they shouldn’t be “giving up” on the “other side.” We need more people to promote the idea of speaking more about the other side’s concerns and fears, instead of instinctually avoiding them. As political researcher Gabriel Lenz put it recently, to Democrats, “Democrats shouldn’t give up on Republicans in a way that many of them have… Our surveys show that Republicans really support democracy and really want democracy to survive. They just need to be convinced that Democrats also support democracy.”
People who refuse to do these things—who think, “Those people are crazy and dangerous; why should I listen to their concerns?”—will continue to contribute to our divides, whether they know it or not. In their refusal to acknowledge some legitimacy and rationality in the other side’s grievances, they will further anger and frighten the other side.
As the great book The Anatomy of Peace puts it, their “hearts will be at war,” and as a result they will treat the “other side” not as people, but as objects, and thus widen the conflict.
Accepting the ebbs and flows of the world
Along with engaging with our political opponents in better ways: more people must be willing and able to accept political and legal defeats without acting as if it’s the end of the world. The nature of a huge and complex governmental apparatus like ours is that political and legal things will inevitably occur that many people perceive as unfair and biased and angering. Toxic polarization results in many people on both sides feeling that they’re losing the battle; people on both sides can have very pessimistic and sky-is-falling views about the “other side” and about the terrible things happening in this country. And these views make more people behave in more aggressive and intolerant ways towards the “other side”—and those behaviors in turn are treated in more aggressive and intolerant ways.
(Related to this, I’m currently reading Michael Anton’s The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return to better understand what drives some of the rather extreme fears of conservatives. If anyone has recommendations for understanding that better, I’d appreciate it.)
If we want to escape the doom spiral of polarization, more of us will have to accept that we will sometimes lose battles that are very important to us. We will have to accept the fact that sometimes the government will, and must, enact policies that we believe are wrong and harmful. That is, indeed, the nature of democracy—or indeed, any system of human governance.
Toxic polarization leads to a situation where more people are intolerant with the inevitable and sometimes arbitrary ebbs and flows of a nation. We can see this play out with the many times people on the left and right have seen court rulings or political wins or losses as hugely unfair and biased, as travesties, of indicators of the us-vs-them war we’re in (the Rittenhouse verdict; the Chauvin verdict; the overturning of Roe v. Wade; to name a few). This is not to say that it’s bad or wrong to be upset with such things—but if it leads to people reaching a chaos-embracing worldview that “the system is broken and can’t be fixed,” that will make chaos more likely.
We can also see that there are many who enjoy mocking the other side’s disappointments when things don’t go their way—savoring the schadenfreude—but yet then later can be filled with a righteous fury when things don’t go their way. More of us should consider that, if the situation were reversed for some of these situations, we’d likely have very different views about their rightness or wrongness. In Robert Talisse’s book Sustaining Democracy (which I highly recommend), he talks about how toxic polarization can make us see the same behaviors as completely different things depending on who’s doing them. In the case of the Colorado ruling, Democrats might benefit from imagining how they’d feel and react if a Democrat candidate they thought had been unfairly maligned were in a similar situation. And Republicans might benefit from imagining how they’d feel and react if a Democrat candidate had done the things Trump had done and a court had made a similar ruling against them.
In the case of the Colorado ruling, no matter how much you disagree with it, courts will make rulings that we disagree with, and that may even be faulty—but this is the nature of things. The workings of any human system of justice or governance is often arbitrary and biased. And it’s also true that we often have an inflated sense of our own correctness: we are prone to being arrogant in thinking that we are in possession of “the real truth.” Sometimes, no matter our confidence, we’ll be wrong.
People who come to be intolerant of political losses or the sometimes arbitrary workings of a complex system will come to seek solutions to their grievances outside the system. They come to believe that the system is faulty and corrupt; that nothing “legitimate” can be done, and that things have gone too far for that. This is what leads to “the ends, of whatever sort, justify the means” mentality. This is what leads to the most dangerous behaviors—like vengeful attempts to punish one’s enemies; harassing political leaders in their personal lives; undemocratic and authoritarian behaviors of various sorts; and rioting and political violence.
Solving problems from within the system
To remedy this part of things, we will need more people, on the left and right, to embrace the idea that, whatever political injustice or travesty they perceive around them, that they must see it as important to try to solve that problem from within the system.
In the case of Republican-side anger about the Colorado ruling, this would mean having faith that that can be resolved from within the system (for example, via the U.S. Supreme Court). (And, even if that were to not work, I’d argue, as I did above, that you should see the value of accepting that loss with grace, and of trying to achieve your political goals through other means.)
And I’d offer the same advice to liberal people: you should be aware of how some of the militant, aggressive behaviors that liberal or anti-Trump people engage in can be seen to amplify chaos and pessimism and as a result increase support for people like Trump, and increase a demand on the right for outside-the-system approaches (“Hey, they do it, so maybe we should, too!”).
Everyone interested in avoiding worst-case scenarios should be interested in what history shows us: how extremity fosters more extremity, and how violence fosters more support for violence. You should see it as important to try to achieve your goals and combat injustice from within the system, just as you’d hope that your political opponents would.
Maybe we need to talk about these things more
It can feel idealistic and naive to write these things. It’s an uphill battle: obviously the most polarized, angry people are unwilling to do these things, and that’s the problem. It can feel as stupidly idealistic as running onto a raging battlefield and shouting, “Hey, be nice to each other!”
But maybe we need more idealism. Maybe we need more people to talk about these ideas. Because it feels like hardly anyone talks about these ideas. Hardly anyone influential talks about the nature of conflict and polarization and how these well understood dynamics play out in our political landscape. Hardly anyone makes the case for seeing how easy it is for people to disagree on complex topics, or how easy it is for us to build divergent narratives.
But it’s also obvious why this is: talking about the nature of polarization means talking about the fact that both liberals and conservatives contribute to this problem, and it’s obvious why few political leaders or activists are willing to do that.
Maybe we simply need more people, on the right and the left, to be brave enough to talk more about these ideas.